I've written about Brazil pre-Lula and post-Lula and spent the last five years covering all aspects of the country for Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal and Barron's. Meanwhile, for an undetermined amount of time, and with a little help from my friends, I will be parachuting primarily into Brazil, Russia, India and China. But will also be on the look out for interesting business stories and investing ideas throughout the emerging markets.

China Economy Remained Weak In Third Quarter

China’s economy likely remained weak in the third quarter ending in September, the state owned Industrial Bank said on Wednesday.

The bank forecast GDP growth of 7.4 percent, with exports rising by a meager 4.5 percent and imports contracting by 1.2 percent. On the positive side, industrial production remains solid at 8.7 percent on the year and retail sales are buoyant from the Industrial Bank’s point of view, up 13 percent.

“It is hard to say when China’s economic recovery will be in sight,” Lu Zhengwei, chief economist at the Industrial Bank told China Daily in the Wednesday edition of the paper. “We expected the economy to stabilize in the third quarter, but the weak performance in the past few months has dashed our expectations.”

China is bound to disappoint investors looking for 9 percent growth or more. The government in Beijing has been slow to stimulate the economy through fixed asset investments which drive a lot of the country’s development and job markets. However, growth over 7 percent has to be frustrating the China shorts. Over the last three months, the iShares FTSE China (FXI) exchange traded fund is up 5.96 percent. The bank and real estate heavy ETF is still underperforming the MSCI Emerging Markets index and the S&P 500 by around 100 basis points.

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